Soliloquy of a Rat
by contrecoup
Summary: This could be described as a tragic tale of new-found friends, forced to overcome danger when disaster strikes, fighting jealousy, betrayal, synthetic emotions, only to be ripped apart by fate in the end, leaving one alone, to contemplate the complex metaphysical issues tearing away at him from within. Or...just Wheatley being an idiot, as always.


When his job whirring about the facility quieted down just a bit too much for his liking – _"A common occurrence, I know! You wouldn't think it!"_ - Wheatley found himself wishing he knew a song or two to sing, just to keep things bearably upbeat. The scientists hadn't exactly made it their top priority to provide him with a soundtrack with which to perform his duties, not that they knew much in the way of good music anyway; he'd heard what they played over the loudspeaker on casual Fridays. He'd tried to talk the mainframe into providing him with some music, but the damn lout didn't believe in jolly work tunes. 'Not good for production,' he'd gruffed, and turned about back to his business. Stingy bugger... And Scottish for that matter! Not...not that that figured into any of it...but Wheatley felt the need to mention it anyway. On principle.

Ehh - sort of.

So here he was, ordered to go half way across the entire facility (more like three quarters in, if you figured it really – and he did) to "investigate a disturbance in the microbial diagnostic readings". Didn't they have bots for that? He swore they had bots for that.

It wasn't entirely unlikely that this was all just an elaborate attempt to get him out of the foreman's hair for an hour or two. That was..he meant figuratively out of his hair, of course. Foreman was as bald as a cue ball.

Despite the unpleasantries, he found the assignment interesting, if he understood the definition of that word correctly, and so he shrugged and whizzed down his management rail to the location of the tiny orange and yellow blob on his screen's map display. There was something..._moving _down there. Legitimately moving. Walking on...on legs! He screwed up his lenses, the logistics of such a foreign action coming to mind. Bipedal, quadrupedal movement, bones squishing against the floor, cushioned by meat and and...and _skin_. He made a face as if he'd just processed a bit of sour information.

He didn't dare using his built in flashlight to see where he was going; no use risking _that_ particular venture. But the heat signature was coming from somewhere lit, thank god. Wouldn't wanna have to come across a test subject gone rogue in the dark. Thing might _bleed _on him.

The gears above him squeaked to a halt when he arrived at the location, leaving him hovering quite a few inches above the facility floor.

"Hello then, who're you?"

The thing could have passed for a shadow on the moon-dusted tile, or a bit of dirt left over from sweeping. It was a tiny meat sack, smaller then he could have imagined. And fast too. Scurried right into a corner the minute he spoke up.

The management rail groaned with the reverberations of Wheatley's chuckle. "Ah mate I can relate to that feeling."

It remained in the dark, staring up at him with red beady little eyes. Since it wasn't offering up any sort of introductions, Wheatley took the initiative.

"You got proper clearance to be running around up here, mate?"

It sniffed.

"I mean, don't get me wrong – _I _won't say nothin. But the security blokes around here are _real _hard asses. Just giving you fair warning. God knows they didn't do **me** the same favor. Guy forgets the password to his docking station ONE TIME and, before you know it, he's the office klutz. A right clown! Never mind Carl and his sleeping about all the time, no~ no that's 'cause he's been shut off. Not because he's_ lazy_. Or or or a _moron_."

The thing sat up on its hind legs and started...eugh..._licking _itself. Was that a normal thing to do in polite company? He grimaced, but took it as a sign to go on.

"I mean, I'm a nice guy! I take a lot of shit off these people! And they think they can get by with it just 'cause _'Oh Wheatley's such a tosser! We can __**totally **__pull one over on him, and he'll be none the wiser for it! That__ idiot!"_

He tuned his vocal speakers to a falsetto setting, as if somehow the higher octave made his mocking more effective.

"But you know what – one day I'm not gonna take it. They'll turn around to bark something else at me and – Oh, what's that? Poor lil pushover Wheatley's not there anymore? Not there to, to check on all the fatty test subjects. Or – or rewire the already rewired rewirings? NOPE, 'cause I'll be gone, mate. _Long_ gone. And they won't have a thing to say about it; and if they do, I won't be able to hear them, and you know why? 'Cause I'll be long gone, like I said. Long gone."

The thing was beginning to walk away now; it seemed unimpressed with his commitment. _Alright then, I'll show him too_, Wheatley gave a firm nod and followed suit.

Finally out in the light, Wheatley noticed that the shadows had projected its size a bit. It was a little runt of a thing, that's for sure. So small the scientists probably would a stepped on him. He could relate to that feeling too...

The thing looked almost wet, but that could just be a trick of the light on it's wiry...er...skin? No...No it looked too bristly to be skin. Scales maybe? No, no those were harder than skin, right? FuRrrr...? Was that a real thing, or had he just made that word up? And hair! Hair coming out of his head! And it- wait, that was normal. Well, hairs coming out of its face then! Three long ones even, coming out of either side of its nose. They kind of...bounced off the ground when he walked, shifting from side to side on its legs, four stumpy little things, larger in the back than in the front. With minute half-circles for ears budding out of its head, and a freakish appendage extending from it's torso on the opposite end, long and thin. It seemed to flick back and forth as the thing scurried.

Bloody hideous, Wheatley thought. But not as smelly as the humans at least.

For a while they walked in silence – well, it walked, while he kind of...purred along on his management rail. The only sound between them, besides the purring (and he wasn't entirely sure if he was using that word correctly) it's tiny nails brushing against the floor in sharp clicks, reverberating down the hall. It made Wheatley uncomfortable.

"So~...you been in this neck of the facility long?"

The thing's whiskers twitched. Wheatley wasn't sure to make of that answer.

"Because I sure have. Well, not here exactly. Down in the containment chambers. Bloody hard work that is..."

He waited for the thing to agree with him. It didn't.

"Bet you ain't even got a job mate," he said. His patience was wearing thin. "Not trying to be rude, but...well, you ARE being rude, so I guess if I was trying, I'd just be trying to get you back 'cause you did it first."

The thing neither agreed nor defended itself.

"Because what I have is a right proper job! I work my servers to the grid everyday checking on those test subjects. Nobody can say they watch over them better 'n me, got that. NOBODY."

Once again, the thing refrained from expressing its opinion.

Another silence settled between them, this one laced with heavy tension. At least on Wheatley's end. He rolled steadily and silent, sneaking glances to glare at the thing as it ducked and weaved between cornered shadows and the light blanching into them from the LED bulbs disguised as ceiling tiles above.

Wheatley was proud of himself for how long he managed to keep his new companion in a disdainful silence. A whole 9.625 minutes - _much_ longer than he managed to go without talking to docking station after it deleted all his employee training holodisks on 'How to Evacuate in Case of a Robot Takeover."

He snorted. Ahhhhh, just thinking about the ending made him laugh. Stupid humans.

And since he wasn't talking, thinking seemed like the next best option to take up the _agonizing_ silence. Glancing down at his new companion again, his mind wandered to what it must feel like. Not just the walking about on legs bit, but the whole package. Going where ya wanted to go, nothing to stop you. Where stepping off the right path didn't mean death, messing up didn't mean they'd pull your plug, or at least that's not what they threatened you with (honestly, Carl'd had his battery die on him; no one did him in, though rumor had it he did try flicking his flashlight on once. Absolutely nothing happened to him, or so the story went. Wheatley didn't want to press his luck, though. After all, this was a story coming from someone with a dead battery now and all).

But no this whole...ah what was it...'freedom'? He didn't trust his definition of the word. It didn't seem anywhere near to what this creature possessed.

"...must be glorious," Wheatley didn't mean to mutter out loud. His words fell like wet newspaper.

The tiny meat wad (he rather liked the name – thought of it himself after all) twitched its ears back and did that standing-up-on-two-legs act again. He cocked his head and watched the robot from the new angle, a motion that Wheatley found himself mimicking.

"It does look impressive. What you're doing there, with your feet. All four of 'um, I mean. Good lord, just look at you – you wanna go left, you go left! 'Oh no I think I'm rather in more of a 'rightish' mood' – well then bloody go right then, you're able to! No one's stopping ya, mate."

Out of the corner of his eye, a shadow curled up the wall in zigzagging half-steps, cutting off Wheatley's thoughts. He recognized the shape all too well. He drew his plates in into a tight, fine line over his eye. Cockroaches. He shook in his chassis. Gave him the bloody creeps.

"Vermin that is. Can't have **that** puttering about, mucking up the place," he explained, glancing down at his companion.

With barely a thought, he swung his chassis one, two, three times until the momentum slammed him into the wall, catching the little rotten intruder in the space between. When he swung away again, what remained of its corpse crumpled to the ground in little bits in pieces. Wheatley grimaced. Great~ now the wall had a stain.

"Not my job to clean it up, that's for sure."

The thing didn't seem to have any particular set of goals or places it needed to go, so Wheatley tracked his tiny short-legged progress across the facility. After all, it _had _been his job to investigate the disturbance, right? Well, this was all part of the investigation.

11:35 am – it discovered a bit of dust, thought it was food, and attempted to eat it. Wasn't particularly successful.

12:17 pm – disaster struck when the thing missed a step leading up to the offices and nearly fell to its bloody and bittersweet death to the sound of whirring gears and little wet meaty screams. Or simply a one story drop. Wheatley liked the first one better. Made for better television

2:47 pm – dust, still not food. Verified that fact. Didn't learn it the first time.

(He wasn't _actually _making notes – dear god he wasn't THAT pathetic - but he did figure himself a right decent narrator. The rat barely even noticed him talking anymore, THAT was how good he was).

"3:22 pm – now making his third attempt to jump from the employee ice box to the adjoining counter top aaaand- Aw c'mon mate! You almost had it! Put some effort into it will ya? A little spine!"

The meat wad struggled up the side of the fridge once more, perched himself for another jump, and launched himself off...right onto the linoleum floor. Again.

"Really? Really that's – that's the best you can do. That's...EERGH you're not even trying anymore! I bet you're not even- wait hold on, where you goin?"

Having finally made a successful leap, it became apparent that the thing hadn't taken too kindly toWheatley's stream of play-by-play constructive criticism. Once it secured it's rather large bit of crumbled cheddar cheese, the one lodged under the microwave where no one ever bothered to clean, it disappeared into a crack in the wall, leaving Wheatley stumbling over his own words.

"Wai-w-wait don't leave! Oh come off it, I didn't mean any of that. I swear it! I think you're a perfectly lovely...whatever you are! C'mon stop bein a tosser, I was only joking!"

The thing would hear nothing of his apology. The last thing he saw of it was it's tail disappearing behind a flap in the faded blue and white flowered wallpaper of the employee lounge.

Though it took a few more seconds of gaped blinking and staring at the wall's crudely painted daisies and tulips that _someone_ at least must have thought was appealing back in the 80's, Wheatley realized the less than presence in front of him and snapped back to focus.

He spoke out loud to no one in particular.

"Well _somebody's_ sensitive."


End file.
